If this decade has taught us anything it's that if you're going to be ironic, be big. Sick of big business controlling your life? Vote for big businessmen to reform inequality! Want to protest against the hardcore Christian Right, the erosion of the separation of church and state and the creeping introduction of "Christian Sharia Law?" Form a non-violent, liberal, do-gooder Satanic Temple to demand equal rights of religious expression!

The film opens with what is clearly a prank: a Satanist rally in support of born again Christian governor Rick Scott introducing a law allowing student-led prayer in schools. A man in black robes with horns attached to his head announces "we're here to spread a message of goodwill and benevolence, and open-mindedness and free expression." At this initial “Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!” stunt Satanist were outnumbered by newsmen. From there though The Satanic Temple has grown rapidly, from 3 people to 50,000 in 3 years.

The question the film doesn't answer is whether this is some kind of situationist protest movement or a genuine religion. Or is it a support community for outsiders and the excluded. For the most part, members are goth/ bikers types, with piercings and tattoos ubiquitous though there is one perky little Elisha Cook Jr type in a bow tie enthusing about how it has given his life purpose.

The film resembles a Michael Moore film about a movement to keep the USA a pluralistic nation that celebrates diversity. The Temple is always up for a stunt: Menstruate with Satan, the headline Mississippi Police Want To Arrest Satanists Who Turn Dead People Gay. Though the bulk of the film is taken up with attempts to have a statue of Baphomet – a winged creature with a goat's head – put up alongside a monument listing the Ten Commandment outside a state building in Arkansas, the film delves briefly into the history of Satanism, (Anton Du Vey, etc) and the relationship between Christianity and the state in the USA. Over here we have assumed that the States was always quite hardline religious but actually the phrase In God We Trust and One Nation Under God were only added to the Pledge of Allegiance and the money respectively in the fifties, during the McCarthyite scare against Godless Communism.

As presented in this not entirely objective portrait, (director Lane has reportedly joined the Temple) they seem like an eminently sensible bunch far removed from the mumbo jumbo Denis Wheatley/ Hammer horror types of 70s News of the Word exposes. For them, Satan is the symbolic embodiment of the ultimate anti-authoritarian rebel. He's the angel who refused to accept God's tight arsed tyranny, the one who offered Jesus some food when he was starving, told Abraham not to kill his own son when God had gone all psycho-needy when he thought he wasn't being loved enough.

That said, you have to question the wisdom of their provocations. As the film shows, their attempts to form “a counterbalance against the dominant religious privileges in America today” is likely to provoke a section of American society not known for its tolerance, or turning the other cheek or being Christian about things. They could easily become a Reichstag used to justify more extreme legislation.

Also, I can't help being a little repelled by their black masses. Is it possible to have well-intended Satanic rituals? It always disturbs me when I see poster for the musical School of Rock and the kids are making the horned devil symbol. I understand that the Black Masses are a necessary part of their movement (that they need to pretend the religion is real for their legal challenges to have any weight) and that it's all theatre and that they aren't taking it seriously but it's open to misinterpretation. For now its all a bit of lark, but that's how it always starts.